Drive Letter assignments shifted

I have four independent powered USB drives hung-off my computer via powered hubs. With partitions, there are 6 (virtual?) drives. Additionally, there is usually one usb flash drive connected.
Today, all the drives dropped down one letter F
to G, G to H, etc., and the flash drive took F (it usually is L). Regardless of whether the flash drive is plugged in, or not, these drop downed assignments persist. Rebooting does not change this.

Multiple questions:
How/why do drive letters persist even when removed from the system? (I travel and "j" drive always was id'd as j even if f, g, h and i were 500 miles away). The drive volume labels are names, not letters.
Is there a way to hold letter designations steady? The reason is my backup program backs up to these drives and always has a letter designation associated with each drive volume name. I think the program gets lost when Backup0(f) becomes Backup0(g), etc. That appears to be the case today (backup failed because f could not be found).

Sniffing the registry for hints was not illuminating.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Renaming drives
    ... had specific letter designations, which several of my programs were linked to. ... I made a mistake and did not have all my drives connected when I added a new external device and it assumed one of my other drives names. ... You cannot re-assign a drive letter that is already in use, so relabel the DVD drive as F: or higher first, then relabel your 2nd hard disk as D:. ... They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Renaming drives
    ... had specific letter designations, which several of my programs were linked ... I made a mistake and did not have all my drives connected when I added a ... right click on the drive and went to "rename", but it wouldn't let me change ... I have an external dvd writer and two internal, assigned x,y,z. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Renaming drives
    ... Open to full screen so you can see all the drives, ... Highlite the drive you want to change, ... had specific letter designations, which several of my programs were linked ... right click on the drive and went to "rename", ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Renaming drives
    ... had specific letter designations, which several of my programs were linked ... I made a mistake and did not have all my drives connected when I ... right click on the drive and went to "rename", ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
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